Search results

Trust is an important facilitator of successful B2B relationships. The purpose of this study is to investigate affect-based antecedents of both interpersonal and interorganizational trust, and their impact on the performance of buyer–supplier relationships. The authors ask two research questions: (1) What are affect-based dimensions of interpersonal and interorganizational trust? (2) How do interpersonal and interorganizational trust influence buyers’ operational performance?

The authors use data from an original survey of 156 buyer–supplier relationships between multinational enterprise subsidiaries and local suppliers in the Thai manufacturing sector to develop a structural model in which the authors test the hypotheses.

Consistent with social exchange theory and social psychology, the empirical analysis shows that affect-based dimensions at the individual level, namely, likeability, similarity and frequent social contact, and at the organizational level, namely, supplier firm willingness to customize and institutionalization of cooperation, are important for establishing trust. In addition, interpersonal trust enhances buyers’ operational performance indirectly via interorganizational trust.

Buying and selling firms may develop organizational trust by developing processes that enhance organizational trust. Individuals with purchasing or sales responsibilities may enhance trust in their personal relationship. However, such interpersonal trust needs to be translated to the organizational level to benefit organizational performance.

The findings contribute to the literature on affect-based antecedents and outcomes of trust. Specifically, the authors offer theory and empirical evidence regarding the contribution of salespersons toward affect-based dimensions of trust and its impact on buyer’s operational performance.

Relationships are a critical success factor for business operations across markets with dominant Chinese culture, like Taiwan. The intersection of a high-quality institutional environment and a traditional Chinese cultural background in Taiwan provides a unique setting for exploring different types of relational mechanisms and ensuing renqing practices (i.e. reciprocal exchange of favors with empathy). The purpose of this paper is to examine when, where and how Taiwanese high-performance organizations manage and deploy interorganizational renqing across their business relationship portfolios. Answering these questions can help build a theory of interorganizational renqing and advance interorganizational reciprocity theorization more generally.

This research is motivated by two key research questions. First is related to how renqing givers understand renqing in the context of their organizations and their interorganizational business relationship portfolios. Second, whether organizations prefer a neutral renqing balance, a renqing debt or a renqing surplus is another point of interest. The study is based on interviews with upper echelon elite informants at six high-performing Taiwanese organizations with business relationship portfolios worldwide.

It is found that interorganizational renqing is deployed as a hybrid resource, taking on the functions of both an investment and a type of insurance against risk. Two notable differences between interorganizational and interpersonal renqing are also noted. First, the social exchange norm aspect of renqing points to salient social exchange norms also in interorganizational exchanges. This confirms the importance of understanding not only the regulative and normative dimensions of business relationships, as a type of institution, but also the cognitive dimensions and underlying institutional logics. Second, this study shows that unlike at the interpersonal level, the notion of renqing debt is not common at the interorganizational level – at least not within high-performance organizations with market leader positions.

This study explores interorganizational renqing practices and their strategic deployment through the use of “accessing” and “embedding” relational mechanisms. The study also adds to the poorly understood nature of interorganizational reciprocity and provides support for developing a theory of interorganizational renqing, as a form of interorganizational reciprocity within a Chinese cultural context.

This paper aims to propose mechanisms of the dark side of interorganizational relationships from a social psychological perspective. The purpose is to understand the role of boundary spanners’ social psychological processes that may trigger the dark side effects.

Multple mechanisms are developed through three social psychological theories, namely, social identity theory, system justification theory and social learning theory.

Boundary spanners’ social psychological processes can trigger the dark side of interorganizational relationships via mechanisms such as excessive cooperation, reification, system justification and path dependence in learning.

This paper concludes with a discussion that offers a new perspective on research on dark side effects and the managerial implications of the present analysis.

This paper contributes to the current literature by extending the interpersonal social psychological processes that could explain the dark side of interorganizational relationships. This paper is a step forward to answer the calls for multilevel considerations of the dark side effects and inspire future research on the role of social psychological processes in dark side effects.

Trust is the glue that holds cooperative relationships together and often exists in an asymmetric manner. The purpose of this study is to explore how to mitigate the issue of losses or increased transaction costs caused by opportunistic behavior in a soft environment where trust asymmetry is quite common and difficult to avoid.

This study focuses on examining asymmetric trust between the government and the private sector in public-private partnership (PPP) projects. Drawing upon both project realities and relevant literature, the primary conditional variables influencing asymmetric trust are identified. These variables encompass power perception asymmetry, information asymmetry, interaction behavior, risk perception differences and government-side control. Subsequently, through the use of a survey questionnaire, binary-matched data from both the government and the private sector are collected. The study employs fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to conduct a configurational analysis, aiming to investigate the causal pathways that trigger asymmetric trust.

No single conditional variable is a necessary condition for the emergence of trust asymmetry. The pathways leading to a high degree of trust asymmetry can be categorized into two types: those dominated by power perception and those involving a combination of multiple factors. Differences in power perception play a crucial role in the occurrence of high trust asymmetry, yet the influence of other conditional variables in triggering trust asymmetry should not be overlooked.

The findings can contribute to advancing the study of trust relationships in the field of Chinese PPP projects. Furthermore, they hold practical value in facilitating the enhancement of trust relationships between the government and the private sector.

Based on a review of the Chinese ethic of bao (reciprocity), this paper aims to study the issue of reciprocity of trust at firm level by analyzing multiple-source data while controlling for the effects of several contextual variables.

The authors collected data from the supplier–buyer partnerships in China’s automotive industry. Hierarchical linear regression approach is adopted to test the hypotheses.

The data show that reciprocity of trust between parties involved has a significantly positive effect on the stability of the supplier–buyer partnership, and that this reciprocity also moderates the relationship between trust itself and stability. In addition, several contextual variables, i.e. the suppliers’ sensitiveness to their buyer’s need, personal contact of top managers, motivation to develop symbiotic partnership and firm location, can also have significant and positive effects on the stability of the supplier–buyer partnership.

This study presents empirical evidence on how the Chinese ethic of bao may influence the stability of the supplier–buyer partnerships, suggesting that examining this Chinese cultural element is a useful exercise. Related to this issue, the data show that the level of trust between the parties in business transactions differs, and that this difference influences the stability of the partnership. In addition, the study suggests that several other factors have significant and positive effects on the stability of the partnership. Interestingly, the data suggest that these effects are more likely to be observed when the reciprocity of trust or bao between the partners is taken into account. By demonstrating empirically the significant direct and moderating effect of bao or reciprocal trust, this study makes an important contribution to the literature on trust and the stability of the supplier–buyer partnership.

In the context of Saudi Arabia, this chapter investigates how clustering promotes knowledge sharing and transfer in an emerging, government-directed industry cluster. It is determined that lateral actors play a key facilitating role, and formal and informal mechanisms and interpersonal links among actors support that cluster knowledge exchange. Limited social capital strength and depth and a lack of trust that prevents knowledge sharing are partially explained by the cluster's limited vertical and horizontal actors.

This paper aims to explain how small- and medium-sized firms (SMEs) create information technology (IT) business value through blended IT outsourcing (ITO). The explanatory framework it proposes enables SMEs to replicate IT capability outcomes (i.e. enhance their economic, strategic and technological competences, namely, ITO success) by endorsing an ITO strategy catalyzed by IT vendor integration.

This study uses covariance-based structural equation modeling to test the proposed research model. Data are collected from 251 knowledge-intensive business SMEs located in Science and Technology Parks in Spain.

The results demonstrate empirically that SMEs can replicate IT capability benefits (i.e. enhance their non-IT competences) through blended ITO in which IT, conceptualized as a transversal supporting activity, is outsourced to an IT vendor while the value creation process remains with the buyer. The integration (i.e. process integration and information sharing) of an IT-proficient vendor catalyzes ITO success. More specifically, the results show that, although process integration is not directly related to competence enhancement, fosters information sharing, which directly facilitates ITO success. The results also show that IT vendor proficiency accounts for ex ante trust.

Managers should think of transformational ITO as a strategy to enhance firm competences. For blended ITO strategies to succeed, managers must have a comprehensive understanding of the business they run, as it is important to create conditions that foster inter-firm information sharing. To achieve these conditions, managers should take special care in selecting boundary spanners, who are the pivotal links in competence enhancement.

While most research focuses on ongoing trust (i.e. trust develops as ITO evolves), this study focuses on initial (i.e. ex ante) trust and analyzes IT vendor proficiency (expert, experienced and reputed) to examine trust as an antecedent of ITO. This study also draws on previous conceptualizations of vendor integration to develop and analyze a two-step integration model to explain how IT vendor integration (i.e. process integration and information sharing) catalyzes enhancement of the buyer’s non-IT competences. This study focuses on SMEs, which are often neglected in ITO studies.

Leveraging Emerson’s theory of power and motivated reasoning, this study aims to explore how the net power of an individual and actual, instead of perceived, vulnerability results in asymmetric trust and distrust development in a dyadic relationship.

Based on extant literature and gaps in the literature, this conceptual paper hypothesises and proposes trust formation based on power dynamics and vulnerability.

This research extends the knowledge base by exploring the role of actual vulnerability over perceived vulnerability in trust formation and distrust formation.

The research propositions imply that the dyadic trust formation process is not rational, and trust itself is not symmetrical but asymmetrical. The net power possessed by one individual over the other drives trust. Net power balance determines the actual vulnerability of the focal individual, and then the individual, through motivated reasoning, trusts or distrusts another individual. Scholars, going forward, could explore how trust formation varies at group and firm levels.

Extant literature has not explored the role of power imbalance in determining actual (versus perceived) vulnerability that influences trust formation between parties. The conceptual paper fills this gap.

This study aims to focus on model development to analyse key factors affecting trust in virtual project teams (VPTs).

A questionnaire survey was conducted on construction professionals participating in virtual teams. Structural equation modelling technique was performed to establish the effect of relevant factors on trust-building in VPTs.

Team performance is highly affected by the trust among the team members. Trust building can be enhanced by improving the quality of team communication, organisation culture, team bonding and team members’ characteristics.

The model developed in this study would benefit team productivity and team members’ learning in VPTs.

This study aims to examine small-firm shifts in behavior during major supply chain disruptions that change supply chains permanently. The study focuses on small to mid-sized enterprise (SME) responses to suppliers’ opportunistic behaviors within a larger disruptive environment. The study addresses two broad research questions: how do small businesses adapt to supply chain disruptions, and under what conditions are such adoptions warranted?

This study used mixed methods, a qualitative netnography and a quantitative analysis of survey data. It tested a model based on responses from members of an online business-to-business community. The model development was driven by the findings from netnography and two theoretical lenses.

The responses suggested a strong relationship between the two theoretical approaches. The conditions described by the resource-based view (RBV) of the firm led to many real options. Supply chain disruptions and deceptive suppliers triggered rapid adaptation through traditional marketing tactics and strategies. Changes in the supply chain, and place, led to responses in price, promotion and product. Respondents hoarded, developed relationships with new, nonopportunistic suppliers and changed prices, products and product mixes. They developed cooperative relationships – coopetition – to deal with shared problems.

This study interprets supply chain disruptions through the lens of marketing in SMEs; it combines qualitative and quantitative methods to better understand supply chain disruptions in a marketing context; it applies the real options theory and the RBV of the firm to marketing in the context of supply chain disruptions, and it reflects real-time small-firm behavior in a crisis.